Limbaugh, Gingrich Announce Pro-Marriage Initiative

(MIAMI FL) Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich joined talk show host Rush Limbaugh yesterday to announce the formation of a new pro-marriage coalition.

“The President of the United States has publicly supported the effort to redefine marriage”, said Mr Gingrich. “He and the homosexual movement have declared war on traditional marriage. In response to this we have formed a new organization in defense of the institution of marriage as it has always been understood, Americans for Traditional Marriage. As the foundation of society, marriage- defined as the union of one man and whatever woman who happens to be his wife at the moment- is the bedrock of a stable society and Mr Limbaugh and I will work our hardest to defend it from all threats.”

This is another example of the strange world we live in. So many issues are complex and messy.

Rush and Newt are right or correct to defend traditional marriage. As St. Augustine will tell you, the union of a man and woman in marriage to form a family with children is the bedrock of society. A stable and functional society requires stable and functional families.

They are, however, the wrong men to put forward this argument because their actions and deeds, having multiple affairs and marriages, make a mockery of their words. The way they have practiced marriage undermines the value of their defense of traditional marriage. So we roll our eyes while many others on the right accept Rush & Newt at face value.

We see the same dynamic at work with warhawks. They were eager to project American power abroad which, of course, means actual American men & women abroad in combat, fighting, dying and being wounded and all the dying, destruction and disruption on the other side to combatants and civilians alike. Almost to a man [and woman?] the warhawks were chickenhawks. When they were young they supported, yet studiously avoided serving overseas during Vietnam be they politicians like GW “I’ll protect Texas or Alabama” Bush, Dick ” 5 deferment/ I had other priorities” Cheney, Tom Delay, Newt [again] or media/pundits like Rush [again], O’Reilly, Bill Kristol, Richard Pearl…..etc etc..the list is endless. These men are hardly the men to call others to serve and possibly die for their country when they so clearly were not willing to make any sacrifices or take any risks themselves. Their ‘patriotism’ is cheap.

The warhawks then capped off their hypocrisy by mouthing the empty platitudes of “Support the Troops”, wearing a flag pin and putting a yellow ribbon on their gas guzzling SUVs. This is in the face of numerous deployments and meager assistance and red tape veterans run into when they return to civilian life. Most people miss the horrible joke of “Support the Troops”. To really support them, we would use them only as a last resort not in a war of choice led by egotistical chickenhawks, We would limit their deployments and offer true assistance to them and their families dealing with all the sacrifices and disruptions in their lives. Assistance to veterans would be a priority which it clearly is not.

In a similar vein we don’t need the titans of Wall Street bashing the notion of assistance to the less fortunate as unclean socialism when they have been the largest recipients of socialism, being bailed out with tax dollars for their greed, arrogance, incompetence and criminality. It is amazing the mental gymnastics people can go through to avoid seeing the hypocrisy and duplicity of their own positions and behavior. Should one laugh or cry?

There’s a lot attacking marriage in our culture right now: lack of a functioning community on whom couples can rely, lack of respect for the domestic life, rapid cultural change yielding lack of respect for ancestors, constant body image issues from the pornographic media, and now the popularity of having children without first forming a family for them to grow up in, current definitions of “freedom” that are not conducive to married life…

It baffles me that no one’s ever half as worked up over any of the above as they are about gay marriage.